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Peak Puppy?

Peak Puppy At Last?

I’m working on a meatier post, but in the interests of clickbait staying engaged with my readers through busy times, I have to ask if we have reached Peak Sad Puppy. I suspect the answer is no, but while I was driving a book-laden U-Haul through the wilds of Eastern Utah, crap seems to have gotten real. Or, if not “real” per se, deeply and comprehensively bizarre. More than usual, I mean.

I’m not kidding about the U-Haul thing, by the way. It was a 26′ long truck packed to the weight limit with used books, and I’m pretty sure those brakes I smelled while barreling down Emigration Canyon weren’t mine. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself.

Anyway, back on point. I may be the last person to hear that an earnest and enraged band of Sad Puppies has threatened Tor Books with a crippling boycott unless a list of demands is met by noon tomorrow. High noon. Among these demands are the censure and reprimand of people who are either 1) not beholden to Tor in any way, 2) completely unrelated to whatever mess is currently in process, or 3) all of the above. There’s also the usual and predictable stuff, easily caught up on for those that avidly follow the ongoing poopshow that is the 2015 Hugos, but I particularly enjoyed the bits about desiring Tor to slap John Scalzi’s wrist for being whatever it is Scalzi is. (A decent and witty guy, I thought, but not everyone appears to agree with me.)

I hope this goes down tomorrow and thousands, er… hundreds, wait… tens? of Puppies stand up to The Man and no longer buy Tor books. Especially those by John C. Wright or Kevin Anderson. Or books by Baen, which I believe is part of the same conglomerate as Tor. (Rotten to the top, right? No way MacMillan is innocent of Social Justice perpetration here.) They definitely shouldn’t get anything by that pinko reactionary Heinlein, since his back catalog is held by Tor. I fully expect this to be a fearsome and irresistible message that no powerful and wealthy company can ignore. And if Tor blows them off? It must be Big Gay.

I wonder if The Great Tor Boycott and Optional Buffet at Golden Corral of 2015 might become the Puppies’ Jade Helm moment. (For those not up on craaaaaazy American politics, this is a bunch of Concerned Texas Citizens publicly fretting that a military exercise named Jade Helm is actually a move by Pres. Obama to, er, take over Texas. I am very definitely not kidding here, because the U.S. doesn’t have any sort of dominion over the great state of Texas right now. None at all. Anyway.) To all you Glitter and Pan-Asian Cuisine Gang members out there, grab yourselves some popcorn and settle in for the show. Might want to grab a poncho though, since the spittle may be flying out of some very rabid mouths. If this is Peak Puppy, we should all be grateful. And if it’s not, I really can’t imagine how it could get any stupider.